Sexual harassment in Egypt still widespread
A number of activists and initiatives are working to combat widespread sexual harassment in Egypt.
Sexual harassment in Egypt is a dangerous phenomenon. It surfaced in Egyptian society several years ago, and has increased to the point that all girls have become victims of it while outside their homes.
At the end of 2013, UN Women, in cooperation with the Cairo Demographic Center, issued a study about sexual harassment targeting women in Egypt. The study clarified that 99.3% of women surveyed had been subjected to one form of harassment or another — 86.8% of them faced verbal offenses, while 94.1% were subjected to dirty looks directed at their bodies. Moreover, 79.2% suffered from telephone stalking and 95.9% were subjected to obscene language. Thus, as part of the “Safe Cities” project, UN Women in Egypt issued a public service announcement titled “Put yourself in her shoes, instead of finding ways to blame her,” to combat violence against women and highlight the extent of fear they feel in the streets.
What is harassment?
The HarassMap initiative, which was founded in 2010 to track and map reported incidents of harassment in Egypt, defines sexual harassment as “any form of unwelcome words and/or actions of a sexual nature that violate a person’s body, privacy or feelings and make that person feel uncomfortable, threatened, insecure, scared, disrespected, startled, insulted, intimidated, abused, offended or objectified.”
